Thursday, September 26, 2013

IPCC's Prof Arthur Petersen: "The sceptics are good for the IPCC"

The view that the sceptics have positively impacted the IPCC is supported by Prof Arthur Petersen, who is a member of the Dutch government team currently examining the report."The sceptics are good for the IPCC and the whole process is really flourishing because of this interaction over the past decades," he told BBC News."Our best climate researchers are typically very close to really solid, sceptical scientists. In this sense scepticism is not necessarily a negative term."...Bart Verheggen is an atmospheric scientist and blogger who supports the mainstream view of global warming. He said that sceptics have discouraged an open scientific debate."When scientists start to notice that their science is being distorted in public by these people who say they are the champions of the scientific method, that could make mainstream researchers more defensive...."Some of what the sceptics are saying is either wishful thinking or totally dishonest," Prof van Ypersele, who is vice-chair of the IPCC, told BBC News."It is just a change in a lower border [of the range of temperature rise]. Even if this turns out to be the real sensitivity, instead of making the challenge extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to meet, it is only making it extremely, extremely difficult."Is that such a big change?"